Urban Food–Waste–Energy, 2020
The real costs of ‘cheap' food are now being realised, including declining human health, the increasingly unethical farming of animals and the remote-from-population production of increasingly nutrient deficient ‘foods’ in degraded soils. As factors of the prevailing economic model, these costs are likely to increase, alongside associated waste and pollution, both individual and collective.
Over the past century, the increase in agricultural productivity generated by the mechanisation of tools and transport, has been amplified exponentially by nitrogen fertiliser. Derived from phosphate rock, a non-renewable resource, based on current demand, peak nitrogen fertiliser supply is projected in 2030 (Cordell et al., 2009).
Producing an abundance of ‘cost-efficient’ food, made possible by synthetic pesticides, fungicides and herbicides, has exacted a significant toll on biodiversity and ecosystems (Chaudhary et al., 2018).
According to a United Nations report in 2019, deforestation, tillage and unsuitable agricultural practices have resulted in the majority of the world’s soil resources being in fair, poor, or very poor condition. It’s estimated soil degradation is happening 10x faster than regeneration, even with the vast application of synthetic fertilisers (Borelli et al., 2017).
Clearly, the remote-from-population modern food supply is unsustainable and evidently, toxic to human health. The significant increases over the past 50 years in food- related allergies, intolerances and syndromes, as well as preventable disease, have been correlated with the food supply (Marcos, Nova, & Montero, 2003), as is seemingly, the current pandemic, both in terms of people’s physiological incapacity to fight Covid-19, and its alleged source (Venter, Eyerich, Sarin, & Klatt, 2020).
In1999, in collaboration with his students, Dickson Despommier, Professor of Public & Environmental Health, Columbia University, presented a vision of growing clean food at scale, sited in urban vertical farms. Today there exists a strong consensus among academics and policy makers regarding the myriad benefits of scalable urban agriculture including waste mitigation, efficiency and sustainability.
In 2020, commercially viable controlled environment agriculture (CEA), most notably on the US eastern seaboard, is attracting significant investment to overcome high-startup costs. Broad advances in technology are enabling scalable growing of an increasingly diverse variety of nutrient-dense plants. These are grown vertically and efficiently in clean and controlled, artificially lit, and increasingly automated environments.
CEA also extends to insect farming, a sustainable and nutrient-dense alternative protein source, also now being produced at scale, most notably in Canada and the Netherlands.
When considered as integral to a regenerative system, organic ‘waste’ from CEA can also contribute to soil regeneration, in two ways; organic matter from insect casings, and by contributing to the production of organic fertiliser, as a by-product of biogas energy production.
In addition to organic waste from local homes and businesses, CEA waste is anaerobically digested, with a large fraction converted into biogas. As the biogas would ultimately also be converted to CO is that energy is produced (Kusch-Brandt 2012). In theory, as part of the proposed novel regenerative complex adaptive system/architecture program, biogas energy might sustain a ‘CEA Habitat’ consisting of CEA, local homes, businesses and services.
Built at varying scales in a number of exemplar experimental communities worldwide, regenerative architecture and systems, are now being woven into urban settlement fabrics e.g. WGV, Fremantle (Pracuccia & Zaffagninib, 2019; Zhang & Lv, 2011). The rate of development is stymied however, as forward thinking designers, planners, policy makers and developers navigate governance and economic barriers.
The vision of weaving CEA into urban high-density living and working settlements presents opportunities for lifestyle change e.g. collectivism, and when considered in association with humanising biophilic design principles, poetic and inspiring programs can result.
Projects
Residential Food–Waste–Energy System , 2020
Exhibition
+ Generative AI [ Midjourney ]
Earthen AM – architectural scale R&D
Barcelona, Spain, IAAC + Valldaura Labs